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Topic: Making News (Read 1083 times)

This programme was a good listen. Who knew Jon Snow had quite the fascination with Beyonce... did nothing to convince me that some good journos are just this side of bonkers... to say nothing of whoever it was (Daily Mail reporter??) who was on his way to the other side... equating images of disaster and violent tales with pornography.

Aside from Jon Snow apparent freeze-framing obsession, I thought it gave a promising introduction into the idea of agenda setting and the thoughts that go into it's production.

Here's some blurb.

Quote

Journalist and broadcaster Steve Richards presents a new, three part series examining the News.

From bulletins to rolling news and citizen journalism, from sensation to public service: what was News, what is it now and what will it become. Why is something 'news' and something else not, and what's the real thinking behind its production? Is the news a public service, a self-fulfilling cycle, an entertainment with its roots in sensation, a constant narrative of 'breaking' events, or a form of national communion and shared belonging?

Once a daily fix, now a 24/7 multimedia blitz, the news is ubiquitous, constant, insistent, updated every moment, multi-channelled and delivered in ever widening and more intimate formats. Perhaps one of the reasons we watch the news, beyond wanting actual information, is a need to feel incorporated into the world, a sense that we have internalised or are included in events on some level. Or is the picture a little darker - a deeper psychological appetite for images of disaster, reports of violence and intense distress that have no decipherable pattern or obvious national significance.